The Redoubtable Ones: Part 4--Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
I had wanted to start the article today with an example of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s art. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any of her art in the free stock photos offered online by Substack.
The photo above is a United States Geological Survey map of an area north of some city. One of her works did focus on a map. The connection is tenuous, but it will have to do. Now on to Jaune’s story which is fascinating.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was a Native artist who was an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribal Nation. In 1940, she was born on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana. She later moved to Corrales, New Mexico, where she had her home and studio. She died at her home in January 2025.
Smith was always interested in art. In 1960, she received an Associate of Arts Degree from Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington; in 1976, a BA in Art Education from Framingham State College, Massachusetts; and in 1980, an MA in Visual Arts from the University of New Mexico.
In the 1970s, she found success as an artist. In 1979, she had her first solo show at the Kornblee Gallery in New York City. At the time, the gallery was located in an Upper East Side townhouse. It had exhibited the works of noted contemporary artists, such as Dan Flavin, who focused on cool, white fluorescent light fixtures to create scenes of shadow and light which he called “situations.” She also was featured in articles in Art in America and The Village Voice.
As an activist in the 1970s, Smith formed an art collective called the Grey Canyon Group, which included Emmi Whitehorse and Conrad House. She later believed the group had organized the first traveling art exhibition of living Native artists.
In her art, Smith focused on bigotry, colonialism, pollution, genocide, and survival. She preferred to create abstract work which was a combination of collage and painting. For instance, in her Survival Map (2021), she used striking colors and muted arrowheads painted in the background, with torn paper creating a map of the United States imposed as an overlay.
In a work from 1974, Indian Madonna Enthroned, Smith created a three-dimensional collage of a Native woman who was made from dried corn, pheasant wings, and beaded moccasins and was seated in a wooden chair holding a book entitled God Is Red with an American flag on her lap. In this work, Smith directly confronted the issue of the American empire and its effect on the Native identity.
In his 2001 article in Art in America, art critic Gerrit Henry stated, “Smith adeptly takes on contemporary American society in her paintings, drawings and prints, looking at things Native and national through bifocals of the old and the new, the sacred and the profane, the divine and the witty.”
Smith was also a life-long advocate for Native artists. By organizing group exhibitions, such as Women of the Sweetgrass, Cedar and Sage (1985), she spotlighted Native art for curators, collectors, and historians.
She never forgot the struggle of Native artists to be recognized, and curated more than thirty shows of Indigenous art. For instance, in 2023, she curated a show of over 50 participating artists at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
During her lifetime, her work became part of the permanent collections of many museums, including the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). In 2023, she became the first Native artist to have a retrospective show at the Whitney. Among her many awards, she was elected to the National Academy of Art, New York (2011); and she received the Living Artist of Distinction Award, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (2012) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award (2021).
In a 2023 article for New York Vulture, she thought of her legacy as being part of, and finding strength through, a larger community. Smith stated, “I am not one. I am one among many. My community comes with me. This is how it’s always been since time immemorial. This is how we’ve survived.”
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was a remarkable person.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/arts/jaune-quick-to-see-smith-dead.html.
https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2023/dan-flavin-kornblee-gallery-1967/press-release.
https://www.vulture.com/article/jaune-quick-to-see-smith-artist-profile-memory-map.html.
https://www.garthgreenan.com/artists/jaune-quick-to-see-smith.